'Christmas miracle' as skiers found alive after Austrian avalanche

Ten people have been found alive after they were caught in a Christmas Day avalanche in Austria.

Rescue helicopters searched into the night after the skiers vanished from view on an Alpine mountainside.

In the early hours of Monday, authorities declared that all 10 missing people were accounted for.

“It’s truly a wonderful Christmas miracle that everyone appears to have escaped with their lives,” said government spokesman Daniel Kosak.

Police said four of the 10 people were injured, one seriously.

They were caught in the snow after up to 600 metres of the ski slope was buried by the avalanche.

A bystander happened to be filming at the time, and the footage revealed how many people were missing.

Rescuers on the mountainside after a ski slope was buried by the avalanche. AFP

More than 100 rescuers and seven helicopters were sent out as hours passed with no word from some of the skiers.

But all were eventually either pulled from the snow or made their own way out before reporting themselves alive.

The person seriously injured was taken by air to a hospital in Innsbruck, about 100km from the avalanche site near Zuers.

“On the basis of current information, we can assume that nobody else is missing,” police said shortly before 1am.

Alpine police will investigate the cause of the landslide in the coming days. Regional authorities had issued an avalanche warning on Christmas Eve because of fresh snowfall and high winds.

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Some of Darwish's last words

"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008

His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.